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Gamestar Mechanic Teaches Kids to Write Their Own Computer Games (Video)
In this video, Brian Alspach tells you how Gamestar Mechanic helps turn kids from game players into game authors, which helps them learn a lot about programming and how computers work in easy steps while having a good time. If you're a parent, you'll especially want to read this page on their site, which will help reassure you that these folks know what they're doing, and might even (hint hint) give you the idea of suggesting that your local school should subscribe to Gamestar Mechanic, which several thousand schools already do. The price varies between free and $6 per month, which is a great deal for something that can engage children for many hours every day -- and just might keep a parent or grandparent interested, too.
Scratch is a development environment that not only is easy to learn, but is free as in beer and speech (as it is open source under the MIT license and CC-by-SA for most documentation and source code). There are also several variants that have been done by people other than MIT that are interesting as well, as it has been around for many years.
While this may be a useful tool, shilling for some group trying to make a quick buck doesn't seem right.
BTW, I agree with people complaining that Slashdot seems to be putting advertisements into the stories themselves. This isn't right and it does diminish what quality is left in the website.
Yeah, they could pay you $6 per student a month. Or they could just download Alice (which is much better and teaches actual OOP) for free.
But thank you for your Slashvertisement.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Can't say you'd miss much from the video this time around, other than that it becomes clear that it is a relatively simple 2D tile-based environment (at least, that which is shown).
Title: Gamestar Mechanics Teaches Kids to Make Video Games
Description: "Level up" from player to designer
[00:00] <TITLE>
The Shashdot logo with "News for nerds. Stuff that matters" zooms out from the top-right to the bottom-left corner.
A view of the interviewee, Brian Alspach, fades in. He is standing in front of a booth backdrop that reads "... just play games when you can make them?" and "...me Generation" and "...th game design studios"
[00:01] Brian>
I'm Brian Alspach I'm the Executive Vice President at E-Line Media, makers of Gamestar Mechanic.
[00:06] Brian>
At E-Line we like to make educational games, games that connect things that kids are really interested in [...]
[00:12] <TITLE>
A view of a few children behind laptops.
[00:12] Brian>
and passionate about with real learning.
[00:14] Brian>
So in Gamestar you start out playing a fun game where you're learning to design and make games.
[00:20] <TITLE>
Back to the view of Brian talking in front of the booth backdrop.
[00:20] Brian>
But then you get a chance to actually make games of your own, and really reinforce critical thinking skills, systems thinking skills, design literacies.
So really excited about doing something like that where we take what kids really like to do and connect it with what they can do.
[00:33] <TITLE>
The view changes to Brian sitting behind a laptop on a desk with a view of the laptop's screen.
[00:33] Brian>
It's really designed for kids age 8 to 14 as their first experience in game design.
[00:38] Brian>
We're gonna go ahead and get started.
I'm gonna log into my account, I'll show you guys a few things.
[00:43] Brian>
Most kids in games start out in our Quest.
[00:46] <TITLE>
The view changes to a screen capture of the Gamestar Mechanic website showing the Quest.
[00:46] Brian>
The Quest is an adventure game story where you are playing the kind of game you'll eventually be able to make.
You play through this fun adventure game, and as you're doing it, you're learning the principles of game design.
[01:00] <TITLE>
The view changes back to Brian sitting behind the laptop.
[01:00] Brian>
You're also earning all of the tools and the assets you'll eventually be able to use when you make your own games.
[01:06] Brian>
We start you off playing the kind of games you'll make and then eventually we'll put you in missions - and this is the very first level you're seeing here - we're sort of teaching you how to move around, but you're also learning about how the enemies, the avatars, the goals, having locks and keys here as a first goal and trying to reach the end of the game as a second goal.
How all of that works together to make a vido game system that's fun and challenging for a player.
[01:31] Brian>
So as you play through these games and you're learning, you're also earning all of those avatars and characters and blocks you'll be able to use in your game.
At any time you can switch over to the design experience in your workshop and make your own game.
It's all drag-and-drop parameterized-based design.
[01:49] Brian>
So I'm gonna make a really simple game right now.
I'm gonna start by adding an avatar - that'll be the guy I'll control - and every game needs to have a goal in it, so I'm gonna add a goal block.
[02:00] <TITLE>
The view zooms in on the laptop screen
[02:00] Brian>
Then I'm just gonna throw a few more blocks in here just so we have something else going on in our game environment.
Just like that, I have a really simple game.
It's not a very good game, but it's simple - I've got my Avatar over to his goal block.
Now that
Instead of the monthly armchair conjecture how about some real data? Yes, many of us have played with some tool and found it more of less usable or interesting resulting the obligatory "you should use X because I did too or at least somebody told me that it is cool" but who has actually run some large scale study with thousands of students to see:
1) if they can learn game design
2) what they learn and if what they learn transfers in any way to topics of relevance to schools, e.g., STEM
3) if teachers in a wide range of environments from inner city schools to Native American communities can actually teach it
Short answer: WE HAVE and as far as I can tell (feel free to contradict me) NOBODY ELSE. The study includes levels of motivation, breakdown by gender and ethnicity, computational thinking pattern analysis of the game and simulations produced, exploration of transfer between game design and STEM. And, perhaps most importantly, most of the schools participating (all over the USA) tried it with non self selecting students. In other words, not the geeky Friday afternoon computer club boys. ALL the kids. See some results here:
http://scalablegamedesign.cs.colorado.edu/wiki/Publications
I work on programming Gamestar Mechanic and wanted to clarify: Gamestar has free and premium versions (and free versions are free and not time bounded, i.e. not just free trials). Premium versions for consumers are $5.95. In schools, a free version for classroom use is also available (also not time bounded and account for about 85% of the educational use) and premium versions are deeply discounted (i.e. $8.95 for an entire class per month) for educational use.